In the world of retail business, the ability for a retail organization to integrate and manipulate planning and forecasting data is very important. One way to accomplish this is to provide an integrated hardware and software solution (e.g., a database system) that allows users to access and generate retail data in a workbook format. For example, a workbook may be a local copy of the data of record in a domain that the end user can view and manipulate. A workbook can exist in a framework which is used to perform specific business functions such as, for example, generating sales forecasts and building merchandise financial plans. A workbook can contain data presented in the form of any number of multidimensional spreadsheets, called worksheets, as well as graphical charts and related reports.
In prior systems, a retail database system (e.g., a retail database software application residing on a server computer) stored information in a persistent multidimensional data cache that was optimized for large volumes and dimensional or time series data access requirements typically required by multidimensional solutions. Such a persistent multidimensional data cache acted as a central repository and was known as a domain. The domain included central definitions of metadata for the solution and provided a single update point. A user could interact with a solution through a personal data repository (i.e., a workbook) which contained a subset of the data (and metadata) from the domain. The scope of the workbook was constrained by the access rights available to the user.
Workbooks can also be characterized as domain subsets using ranged hierarchies based on user selections. In prior systems, workbooks were stored in each domain's directories, under the workbook owner's user directory. The workbook storage location was assumed to be one level below the domain's user directory. However, in many customer domains, workbook data can constitute a large percentage of the total domain size. Multiple operations referencing a user's directory can lead to contentions or cause disk out-of-space issues.